Nasarawa, Joint Tax Board move to increase IGR

The Nasarawa State government has said that it has concluded arrangements to collaborate with the Joint Tax Board to find ways to increase its Internally Generated Revenue so as to abolish the payment of incomplete salaries to workers across the 13 local government areas and 18 development areas of the state.

The state government said it was worried by the persistent shortfall in the local government allocations from the Federation Account to the state.

The state Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Mr. Haruna Iliya-Osegba, disclosed this on Friday while addressing journalists after the Joint Account Allocation Committee meeting in Lafia.

According to him, there is a shortfall of N84m in the federal allocation to the 13 local government and 18 development areas of the state for the month of March when compared to what was received in February.

He said the state would not pay full salaries to local government workers even though it had taken care of the shortfall with the entire stabilisation account.

The commissioner also lamented that there were scores of ghost workers in the payroll of the local governments, urging the Auditor-General of the state to probe the local government pensions list, primary health care staff list and that of the Nasarawa State Universal Basic Education Board, which were directly under local government payroll, to remove names of dead workers.

He added that after all statutory deductions from the Federal Allocation for local government areas in the state, the 13 local government areas and the 18 development areas shared over N1.2bn.

He, however, maintained that the state government, in finding a lasting solution to the payment of incomplete salaries to local government workers, had identified increasing Internally Generated Revenue as the solution to the problem.

He added that the state government would partner with the Joint Tax Board to find a way to boost the revenue base of local government areas.

He said, “In the course of our discussion, we met with the Joint Tax Board and we presented this issue to them. Subsequently, we are going to meet with the Joint Tax Board to ensure that we are able to resolve this issue of Internally Generated Revenue in Nasarawa State.”

The commissioner explained that local government workers would be paid between 70 and 90 per cent of their salaries, expressing hope that the situation would improve in subsequent months.

He said, “If we are able to generate N1m per day in some local governments, the local government should be able to generate N30m a month and it will go a long way to close the gap for us to pay local government workers 100 per cent salary.”

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